Paternalistic Laws Make Very Little Sense
There are 3 types of laws: Freedom laws; Power laws and Paternalism laws. Freedom laws are those laws we actually like. Free Speech and things like that are all freedom laws. Some freedom laws are less obvious than others. But if the law makes your freedom stronger, it is a freedom law. Power laws are similar. Some people confuse power laws with freedom laws. Power laws are those that give people power. Most obvious examples are laws about censorship. Or laws that state that you can't criticize the government, some countries have that. Those give power to the government over the people. Power laws are any laws that give anybody power. Taking away somebodies else freedom in the process. But then there are paternalism laws.
AI The Intellectual Laziness Of Humans
Artificial Intelligence - the last frontier of the electronics. An invention that will alter the course of evolution. For the last few billion years humans slowly evolved an organ that gave us superiority among the animal kingdom. The brain. A machine of logic, reason, curiosity and knowledge. It brought with it civilization. Before there was any civilization people would mindlessly do nothing unless afraid, hungry or horny. Every other animal today just chills most of the time. They don't have jobs. They don't have art. They don't have laws or social responsibilities. Animals are lazy. And humans are not particularly that different from other animals. Since the dawn of civilization we fought against social responsibilities. We fought against hard labor. We fought for our right to do nothing and chill all day long. We invented machine after machine. We replaced hard labor of almost every kind and all due to our superior brain. Until we reached a point where we took it upon ourselves to replace the brain too.
Justification for Money
This is kind of both an update on my current financial state and also a deep dive into philosophy and the ethics of money itself. As you maybe know I am struggling with even basic necessities at the moment. And I might get kicked out of the house. I have a lot more hope now than I had before that. I still don't exactly know how I will pay the rent this months. But judging by my father's tone when he spoke to me about it. It seems like it should not be a problem. I will probably write a proper update ones I get out of this mess.
School Shootings: More Or Less Guns
It seems like United States of America has a unique problem related to guns. I certainly don't remember being taught at school in Israel or earlier in Ukraine about how to survive a potential gun shooting by a rouge student or other kind of terrible person. Here in Israel they do point us to the direction of a bomb shelter. So we would know where to run when a siren is heard. But that's about it.
What Lies Beneath
Have you ever wondered what would Alfred Hitchcock do in the age of CGI and VFX? What kind of strange insane shorts he would come up with? Well Robert Zemeckis set out for himself a challenge to find out. He is notorious for using visual effects creatively. A lot of people might be familiar with the mirror shot he did in the film Contact. So something like trying to make a Hitchcockian thriller of the 21st century was just about the right kind of thing for Zemeckis.
Coercion
Sometimes a program might give you impossible choices were it is impossible to say no to something terrible. This kind of Coercion is a malicious functionality.
Breaking The Waves
Lars Von Trier is an interesting filmmaker. He directs mostly very depressing movies that are very hard to watch. Breaking The Waves is an interesting case study in his filmography because on some weird level this is one of the rare examples of a Lars Von Trier film with a happy ending. Even though you could perhaps argue that the ending is nowhere near happy at all.
Jail
A Jail is any operating system that has to be Jail-broken to install applications not approved by the developer.
Baby Driver
If you expect Baby Driver to be anything like Hot Fuzz. Don't! If you expect Baby Driver to be anything like Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. Don't! If you expect Baby Driver to be anything like Last Night In Soho. Don't! The director of Baby Driver, Edgar Wright set for himself a challenge to make every next movie he does in a different genre. Therefor you get absolutely different effects from his movies. Even though there are obvious Edgar Wright tropes in every one of his movies.
The Danger Of Good Intentions
Paternalism - a world view that states that sometimes forcing a person against their freedom, if for their own good, is acceptable. A good example is the collapsing bridge thought experiment. A bridge is about to collapse and you know it for certain. You advertise this fact so people will not go onto the bridge. You put signs. You tell people about it. But somebody still walks toward the bridge with what looks like an intention to cross it anyway. You show that person the signs. No response. You yell at the person "The bridge is about to collapse!". No response either. You realize that the person probably doesn't even speak English. Is it okay to force this person, to reduce his freedom, and force him out of the bridge?
Vampire's Kiss
Francis Ford Coppola, a director behind things like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now did not direct Vampire's Kiss. It was directed by Robert Bierman. A director who did mostly work for TV. And who's directing style is not necessarily bad. I don't think he is bad. The movies do not feel terribly directed. It's just it seems that as a director he is not necessarily exciting.
Encryption Could Get Illegal To Protect Children
A number of countries are pushing at the moment laws that would undermine everybody's privacy by making it illegal to communicate with end to end encryption. They believe that this will stop criminals. And especially that it will save the children somehow. When an article about this was seen by Sheiny this is how she reacted to it.
Please Help Me Debunk This Theory
I know that philosophy is not a science. Because it is about what we cannot know, as some smart people out there say. But I've got here a philosophical theory which I want you to debunk. The theory is something I truly believe in, and therefor I'm biased towards it. So I suppose you could be better at debunking it, since you are not me.
Why Jews Are Successful
Like it or not, but it seems like a large majority of hate toward Jewish people stems from the rate of Jewish success, which is apparently so large, that people form conspiracy theories, which I would love to be true, about Jewish elite classes or whatever, that rig the system in favor of Jews above anyone else ( actually if I think about this hard enough something like this is theoretically possible, but it would be completely decentralized and almost utterly uncoordinated ) . The truth is perhaps anti-climatically mundane in comparison.
Dumb Phones
"You know they are listening to us this very moment?" - said Jake to Tom on a party one night. "What are you talking about?" - Tom was obviously confused. So Jake had to continue - "You know the Facebook app and the Google app on your phone is constantly recording what we have to say to each other, forming an opinions on us. They claim it's for advertising. But they can use it for anything they want. You know?". Tom looked at Jake with a slight smile. He knew he had a very good comeback. After a short pause Tom said - "I use a dumb phone." - and went into the party. But Jake didn't stop feeling bad. Jake didn't use no phone at all.
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
During the making of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind Steven Spielberg was already kind of a big man in Hollywood. But from the other side he was still young. Technically speaking this was his third theatrical film. He did work for television from the late 60s. At that time he already directed a number of feature length TV movies. One of them was the famous Duel. And then he did only 2 theatrical pictures: the 1972's The Sugarland Express and the 1974's Jaws. And now there is this movie.
Debunking A Critique of Free Software by Anonymous
An Ultimate Hacker by the name of Troler sent me an interesting article written by some anonymous writer and published subsequently by Jake Bauer. I already debunked a few anti-free-software and anti-Stallman articles before. But most of them were from either complete imbeciles or corporate imbeciles. This time it seems like the article, which is titled "A Critique of Free Software" is written by a Free Software enthusiast. And by a person that is genuinely interested in the success of Freedom. He criticizes some aspects of the Free Software Foundation that he believes are detrimental to its stated goals. And believes that the goal is not what they tell it is.
Digital Restrictions Management
Digital Restrictions Management or DRM is any software functionality that is designed to prevent you from using the files on your computer the way you want to use those files. This is obviously a malicious feature. And is defective by design.